The Internet is booming in recent years. The World Wide Web (“the Web”), as the multimedia portion of the Internet, can provide a variety of services by combining voice, graphics, and dynamic images together in addition to the typical e-mail service. It is understood that a substantial amount of data is associated with, for example, multimedia. As such, the typical dial-up networking involving the use of phone line and modem cannot provide the capability of transferring a substantial amount of data as required by multimedia by simply providing 28.8 Kbps, 33.6 Kbps, or 56 Kbps. In some conditions, even a local network or ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) cannot provide a data transfer rate acceptable by network users.
For providing higher data transfer rate, many ISPs (Internet Service Providers) submitted solutions in which the interesting one of the solutions is DSL. DSL, as self-explanatory, is a digital subscriber line different from the typical POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). DSL has many types collectively called xDSL. In the existing xDSL, ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) technology is the most important one because ADSL involves the use of POTS as means for carrying out a high data transfer rate without modifying and/or expanding the existing data transfer infrastructure. Also, associated operating standards are stipulated. Further, products associated with ADSL are widely used by businesses and individuals in their daily work and life. Such increasing popularity of ADSL not only increases data transfer rate and efficiency but also brings a great convenience to our daily life and work.
As stated above, ADSL involves the use of POTS the same as the typical PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). ADSL using a dedicate modem can obtain a data transfer rate in the range of 1.5M bps to 9M bps in download or 64K bps to 640K bps in upload. Variation is possible due to different ADSL modem types, data transfer modes, and/or data transfer distances in which the data transfer distance is the most important factor. The different data transfer rates between download and upload (e.g., download being faster about 10 times than upload) is the reason why such DSL is called asymmetric DSL.
Conventionally, a PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) is used between a computer at a end user and a server of ISP for transferring data over ADSL. A user can use an ADSL modem and phone line to transfer data in an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) over the Internet. An ISP may provide one of two means for providing IpoA (IP (Internet Protocol) over ATM, PPPoA (Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM) or PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet, i.e., RFC 2516 Protocol) based dial-up networking service over ADSL depending on applications. These means are detailed below.
(1) ADSL modem. A user couples an ADSL modem to his/her computer. Next, the user can use the computer to transmit data, receive data, and/or browse by means of the ADSL modem over the Internet. The accessing to the Internet by an ADSL modem is inexpensive. But only one computer is allowed to gain access to the Internet at one time. In other words, multiple computer accessing to the Internet simultaneously is not possible. Moreover, the user has to install a dial-up software, a driver, and application programs into the computer after connecting the ADSL modem to the computer. However, it is often that a user cannot make a successful installation, resulting in frustration. For developers, they also experience difficulties in designing and/or updating such various drivers and application programs with respect to a variety of platforms and/or operating systems (OSs).
(2) ADSL router. A user may couple an ADSL router to an associated local network server. A NAT (Network Address Translation) is provided in the ADSL router. As such, a computer of local network may use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) to share an IP address with other computers by means of NAT. Thereafter, many users using the local network may have access to the Internet through the ADSL router and once accessed, a user may use the computer to transmit data, receive data, and/or browse. However, the user has to pay a high fee for using an ADSL modem in addition to installing a dial-up software, a driver, and application programs into the computer. As such, the cost is prohibitively high. Moreover, computers coupled to the local network can only obtain translated addresses rather than authorized IP addresses. Hence, for some application software packages using authorized IP addresses (e.g., online video games, VoIP services or the like), a user cannot use such software packages over ADSL. Such problem may be solved by using a special design. However, for most users it is a very difficult task to achieve. Hence, a need for improvement exists.